J.D. addresses the news that he is going to be a father and Dr. Cox is worried about how his anger is going to impact his offspring. Meanwhile, Carla and Turk prepare for the impending arrival of their new baby. Elliot feels left out because she is childless, while the Janitor wonders if he has wasted his life.

Tom Shales

Even though Scrubs is the best of the season's new comedies, it may not have the most laughs. But oh mama, it has the most heart. Scrubs is to the average sitcom as a steak at the Palm is to a Big Mac. We are talking an entirely different, and superior, species. [2 Oct 2001, p.C01]

Scott D. Pierce

Howard Rosenberg

Although the humor begins broadly, it grows on you as you adjust to its rhythms, and ultimately you hear yourself laughing out loud. This is easily NBC's best new series. It's also one of those distinctive comedies in which everything meshes. [2 Oct 2001, p.C2]

David Zurawik

The humor is dark, and the editing is fast-paced and often non-linear. The visual sensibility heightens the surreal quality of life and death with young Dr. Dorian as he careens like a bumper-car through his shift. [2 Oct 2001, p.1E]

Phil Rosenthal

John C. McGinley is a comedic genius. While series lead Zach Braff tries to channel Tom Cavanagh from "Ed" in this single-camera, laugh-track-free comedy about young doctors-in-training from "Spin City" co-creator Bill Lawrence, it's character actor McGinley ("Wall Street") who owns and almost singlehandedly carries the show in his supporting role as mentor Phil Cox. [2 Oct 2001, p.47]

Gail Pennington

Once it relaxes, however, Scrubs turns out to be a thoughtful show that has dispensed with a laugh track and proves amusing enough not to need one. (Now, let's dispense with those fantasies.) Shot with a single camera in a former hospital, it aims for the exaggerated realism and the light-meets-dark tone of "M*A*S*H" -- a worthy ambition even if it doesn't get there. [2 Oct 2001, p.F1]

Terry Kelleher

Robert Bianco

That sincere desire to serve is key. In the wrong hands, Scrubs could have been another mean-spirited juvenile comedy about smart-aleck, self-absorbed, barely post-collegiate yuppies -- which is the impression you may have gotten from NBC's inexplicably unpleasant promos. But Lawrence takes pains to show us that these doctors take their jobs seriously, an essential task accomplished without sacrificing any of the humor. In a sense, the show is a flashback to M*A*S*H, both in its look (Scrubs is shot without an audience) and in the way it blends laughs with life-and-death emotion.

Brandon M. Easton

James Poniewozik

Especially in the pilot, Scrubs is burdened with every gimmick that Ally McBeal and its offspring have used to simulate comedy--fantasy scenes, gratuitous sex jokes and sound effects. ... But the show also has a dry, unjaded humor.